Watching The Raid with Liz. Gareth Evans is the best action director in the world, because he such a good director, period. He doesn’t just choreograph great fight scenes and then film them. He puts thought into the shots that the sequences are constructed from. He’s a builder.
Watching Gareth Evans movies gets my puzzle brain working. “Three guys have me trapped in a small room, and they all have machetes and I only have a paring knife. What ordinary objects can I use as makeshift weapons to even the odds?”
I also love that this is a director who can carve out space for a beautifully acted but unassuming scene between brothers in a kitchen, just alternating medium close-ups. Nothing fancy. Because this scene is about emotional pain. The action is happening in the faces.
You really do get Gareth Evans brain when you watch a Gareth Evans movie. “There is a tall shelf full of metal jugs behind the guys fighting on the table—maybe one of those guys will grab one of the jugs and start beating the shit out of the other guy with it.“
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